The Enchanted Place

I have been out for a long time today, at my new enchanted place, a piece of paradise, a slice of Faery.

Set off down Willow Street, past the snowdrops, then through the graveled alley and the wooden gate, down the winding dirt road, over the grassy embankment, and then climb, carefully, down the mossy rocks and scooch down finally onto the tree, whose trunk stretches out from the bank, and bends in at an L, so that a very nice seat can be made, over the winding creek itself.

It is nice to sit upon, with your toes in the water, and a friendly arm wrapped round the trunk, or, with your back leaning against the trunk, and your feet secure on the wood of the bark by the bank, a good book in your lap.

Today it was a book about Coleridge, and Romanticism, and Faery. (this book)

I was there 3 hours.

A duck swam by, going upstream first, then winding downstream later. I was so happy to see him pass, to dip my toes in the same water in which he swam.

I have found my own entry into Faery.

And, as you do, I discovered some things.

Firstly, learning of Coleridge, and Wordsworth, and Scott, and Tolkien, etc., I feel I have found a path, towards a kind of understanding that I have been hungry for for a long time. I have found companions, fellow travelers, knowledgeable mentors. I read, and say, "Yes! Of course! I agree! I know!"

An 'enchanted' world assumes a participating consciousness for whom modern distinctions between psychic and material, mind and body, symbolic and literal, do not exist. Real knowledge occurs only via the union of subject and object, in a psychic-emotional identification with images rather than a purely intellectual examination of concepts. . . . It is the totality of experience; the 'sensuous intellect.' - pg. 25

The Other World of Faery is a metaphor for the dwelling place of mystery, Faery is a place of the mind, a place of knowledge and perception, a place where Spirit and Love are known and  experienced. Faery is an act of the symbolic imagination. The Land of Faery is a mental space, its geography exists within the imagination and without boundaries. - pg.28

[Fairy tales] are unreal but they are not untrue; they reflect essential developments and conditions of man's experience. - pg.57

It is a journey into the subconscious mind, just as psychoanalysis is.Like psychoanalysis, it can be dangerous, and it will change you. - pg.59

There is another door that can be opened by reading legends and fairy stories, and for some children, at the present time, there may be no other key to it. - pg. 61

In Coleridge's view, the romance is not simply an aid to the transmission of moral truth; it conveys a truth of its own which cannot easily be transmitted in any other way. Romance keeps the mind open to possibilities which a dominant rationalism might otherwise hide. Faery Tale can be the key, the right language for the part of man that is wholly unsatisfied by the study of what we have come to call Science. This is true because Faery tale speaks metaphorically. - pg.61

A fairytale, a sonata, a gethering storm, a limitless night, siezes you and sweeps you away. . . the great forces lie in the region of the uncomprehended. . . the best thing you can do for your fellow is -- not to give him things to think about, but to wake things up that are in him; or say, to make him think things for himself. The best Nature does for us is to work in us such moods in which thoughts of high import arise. . . she rouses the something deeper than the understanding -- the power that underlies thoughts. - pg. 63

I promise now, that with each grain of sand added to the hourglass of my life, Faery shall not fade from view, but grow clearer, closer, and more familiar.